The present invention relates to a method, apparatus and software for collecting usage data for one or more data feeds. Specifically, the present invention relates a computer system comprising a set of client computers connected via a network to a server computer wherein the server computer and the client computers may be arranged in conjunction with software for providing data feeds from the server computer to any of the client computers over the network and wherein the usage data for one or more data feeds may be determined and logged.
Data feeds are a mechanism that enables data users or subscribers to receive periodically updated data from a data source or publisher. Data feeds enable a data publisher to disseminate regularly updated data to a large number of data subscribers in an efficient manner. The data may, for example, comprise news, message or financial data and be provided over a network such as the Internet. Data feed protocols commonly operate by the data subscriber or client periodically polling the data feed source for updates to a given data feed. A number of protocols exist for data feed services such as the Really Simple Syndication (RSS) protocol, the Atom Syndication Format (ATF) protocol, or the Resource Description Framework (RDF) Feeds protocol. Data feeds may also be implemented in other network protocols such as the Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP).
Current data feed mechanisms enable subscribers to subscribe to a given feed anonymously. Furthermore, the same data feed subscriber may repeatedly poll the same data feed source regardless of whether or not the user has not viewed the data feed. Thus, it is difficult for a data feed publisher to determine usage statistics for a given data feed.